


Justified

by mmyz



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-24 04:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmyz/pseuds/mmyz
Summary: He'd always fought pain and fear with anger, and this was not different. Another horse shit situation, to top the horse shit cake of the last couple of months. That being said, it was a view of that particular cake that he hadn't seen before-but it didn't look any better upside down than it had right side up.Spoilers for Blessed are the Peacemakers (because that was a big deal, and no one's talking about it)





	1. Chapter 1

He'd always fought pain and fear with anger, and this was not different. Another horse shit situation, to top the horse shit cake of the last couple of months. That being said, it was a view of that particular cake that he hadn't seen before-but it didn't look any better upside down than it had right side up. 

Arthur had tried talking his way out, then running his way out of his current predicament. One had gotten him hit in the face by the damn boy with the Irish accent. The other had gotten him shot. As far as bad plans went, just jumping up and running might have topped the list. 

He'd tried insults-which got threats of more shooting, but he figured that the O'Driscoll boys had orders to keep him alive for some reason or another. Maybe they enjoyed hanging people like sides of beef. Maybe they had some kind of real plan or something. Only thing he knew for sure, was that the O'Driscolls weren't proper Outlaws. Sure, they stole and robbed trains and occasionally-more than occasionally-shot up the town. But they took pennies off beggars and killed women and children on a whim and didn't seem to think beyond the next score. 

They didn't have a plan, or any honor, and that made them easy to hate. And hating was one thing that Arthur was sure he was good at. So he hung upside down like a man already dead and, when he drifted back into a state where he could actually think instead of staring blankly at the patch of floor in front of the stairs, he imagined what he'd do to the pack of idiots when Dutch came to get him. It was a better painkiller than whiskey, or he'd convinced himself that it was. 

Eventually the grating of the doors to the cellar pulled him back to some semblance of consciousness. His breath was wheezing in his chest, grating over the back of his throat, which was new. The quality of the pain in his shoulder had changed, too. Not the hot, fresh burn of open flesh. Now it hammered with every damn thump of his heart, which, even to his own ears, seemed too fast. Sweat crawled icily down from the small of his back, competing with the urge to shiver. 

He forced his eyes to focus on the doorway, squinting in the light. It took more effort than it should have, and left spots floating around in his vision. He locked his jaw and let the comforting heat of anger wash over him at the sight of the greasy hair, and the ratty face, and the generally filthy, stinking demeanor of his captor. 

"Arthur Morgan." Colm thumped down the stairs, same as always. With that same stupid, raspy voice and that same grimy, ugly face. "It's good to see ya." 

The anger made it possible to grid out a few words, past the groans that spilled out of his lips whenever he opened his mouth. "Hello, Colm." He coughed, ribs searing with hot, fresh pain. 

"How's the wound?" Colm asked, ever the gentleman, gesturing with what might have been a spoon. It was hard to tell from upside down, with the strange darkness flickering around the edges of his vision. Whatever he was eating smelled rancid. Or, maybe, Arthur decided, it was the wound that smelled like that. 

"I hardly feel it." Arthur said, lips moving slower than they should have. He wasn't going to give the piece of shit the pleasure of hearing him complain. No, he was not. 

"You will," Colm brought the spoon closer, threateningly close to the injury in question. Arthur grabbed for his wrist, with both hands, almost too weak to keep it away. "septic, it ain't nice." 

Colm pulled back, sending Arthur swinging. His left arm dropped, dragging at his injured shoulder and ribs and everything else. A pained hiss punched out of him, the sudden movement and swinging pushed his eyes out of focus and he fought to keep staring Colm in the face. Damn him and his godforsaken spoon and his shitty food. If he could have, he'd have taken the spoon out of the little weasel's hand and rammed it right into his beady eye. 

"Now, tell me," Colm continued, caught up in his little performance. "fine gun like you…why are you still running around with old Dutch?" He asked in his petulant, raspy voice. "Could come with me and make real money." 

Arthur might have laughed, if he wasn't sure it would hurt so much. This man, and his ideas. He didn't know nothin' about what an Outlaw should be. He was just some kind of common robber. "It ain't about the money, Colm." 

"Oh no, it's Dutch's famous charisma." 

The kick came from the side, where Arthur couldn't see, and damn if the O'Driscoll couldn't give horses lessons. Any reply that Arthur would have made was punched out of his lungs. 

"You killed a whole bunch of my boys at Six Point Cabin." 

"I ain't got no clue what you talkin' about." Arthur gasped, hoping to avoid another kick. Of course he remember Six Point Cabin. Sneaking in, in the dark, taking out half those boys with a knife before they'd even seen him. It might have been one of the nicer things he'd done in the past few months. Most fun he'd had in a while, at least. 

"Oh, you lie, my friend." There was the click of a hammer going back, and Arthur dragged his eyes up. Maybe he'd just get shot dead, end it all here. "And I thought Dutch preached truth."

"Let me go, Colm, and end all this crap between you two. We all got real problems now." Dutch said revenge was for fools, and O'Driscoll was proving himself to be the biggest of fools. Maybe he'd see reason, remember the Pinkertons and the bounty hunters and the endless creep of civilization. But, Arthur thought, he probably wouldn't. Not a small man like Colm. 

"The way I see it, they get him, they forget about me." The gun wasn't pointed his way anymore, but still hanging around close enough that it caught his attention-flashing dangerously in the candlelight. 

"They ain't the forgetting sort. If I were you, I'd run as soon as I had the money." Now he was giving Colm the same advice that he'd been giving Dutch since that damn ferry job that had started this whole mess. May as well tell the O'Driscoll to keep heading west, until the only civilization was a couple of cows and smoke on the horizon.

He just laughed, the bastard. "Oh, I know you would." His condescending. "But see, we lure an angry Dutch in to rescue ya," His hand brushed down Arthur's chest, and Arthur flinched away at the threat of more pain, "grab all of ya and hand ya in, then disappear."

Real fear-different than the kind that had been lurking around in his head for days-spiked in Arthur's chest. Shit, were they in trouble now. Dutch might preach all day about an eye for an eye making the world blind, but he sure wasn't going to leave Colm lie after a move like this. God damn it, he needed to get out and warn them. Keep Dutch from doing something stupid. 

"So you only met with him to grab me?"

"Of course." Colm chuckled. "He gonna be so mad. He gonna come raging over here and a whole lot of ya and the law'll be waitin' for him. Oh Arthur." The gun was back, shining unnaturally bright. "Arthur, I missed you." 

Colm tossed the gun in the air, grabbing it by the barrel. Arthur braced for the blow that would follow, for all the good that it would do-which wasn't much. His ribs creaking and grated and bent in a way that they really shouldn't have, then flashed with hot pain when he coughed. It was enough that he missed Colm's leaving, missed the door closing, missed the next couple of hours entirely.

He woke up again, alone this time, and immediately felt a fresh wave of panic crash down on him. He needed to get out, get back to Dutch. Needed some way to get out of the damn chains. Arthur scanned the room, swinging gently back and forth. Something caught the light on the table, some kind of file that they'd been threatening him with for a while now. Might even be close enough to reach, if he could get a good swing going. 

He shifted his arms and gritted his teeth against the protests from the left one. Swing right, swing left. Swing right again. He reached for the piece of metal, missed, and reached for it a second time. Hard, cold metal pressed into his fingers, threatening to slip free from the sweat on his palm. 

His ribs screamed in protest at the move when he pulled up, ramming the file into the lock and smashing it open. They screamed again when he hit the floor, and he had to lay there and blink stars out of his eyes for a minute, try to catch his breath through the rasp in his lungs.

There was a table, and a candle, and the rancid liquid seeping out of his shoulder suggested that Colm hadn't been exaggerating. Septic, shit. Explained the fever, though. The chills. The way the room tilted dangerously. He remembered Swanson working Bill over, a couple of years back, when he'd been bit by a dog. Left the wound fester until the skin around it pulled tight and red. Swanson had burned the thing back open, said something about fire cleaning out all the shit inside.

Arthur held the file over the candle flame until the handle was hot against his fingers, took a breath, and rammed it into his shoulder, twisted until the meat stopped hissing. God damn. Burns were a special kind of pain. It seemed like the bullet had been pulled out already, since the file didn't catch on anything hard enough to be metal. Small blessing. Maybe he'd have a smaller scar. Probably not, with his luck. 

There was a shotgun shell, too, nice and big. He dumped the powder across the bloody hole and touched the candle flam to it. Clenched his teeth, hissing a couple of hard breaths through his nose. Fucking hell in a hand basket, and he'd thought it couldn't hurt worse. 

"Shut your hole." One of the O'Driscoll's, the only real Irishman of the bunch, opened the doors and started yelling about something. "I don't wanna go to Mexico. I wanna go home, home! Hold on," One of the others must have said something, "I'll be back in a minute." 

The light of a lantern washed over the walls. Arthur dropped off the chair and crouched as far back against the wall as he could, waiting for the man to get down the stairs. The man saw the empty shackles and started to turn. 

"What the hell?" He didn't get to finish. Arthur took his chance and grabbed him, one arm locked around his neck, the other on the side of his head. His neck broke with a crunch, his body hit the floor with a thud that was too loud. 

Arthur grabbed his shoulder, gritted his teeth over the throb of having to use the damn arm for anything, and pulled the knives off the man's body. He was armed, he was out of those damn chains. He was going to head for Dutch and stop the gang from falling into Colm's trap. But first, he was going to kill these idiots for shooting him and stringing him up, and he was going to enjoy doing it. 

"What's he still doing down there? It's one thing torturing a man, it's another thing putting him through stories of the homeland," One of the guards carried a lantern past the entrance of the cellar. "He better hurry it up…I don't wanna be here when the law comes for that side of beef." 

Arthur slipped up the stairs, hunched over enough that he was almost crouching. It was the boy who'd held the gun to his shoulder and laughed. He crept up behind him, close enough to hear his breath and smell the unwashed stink of him. Then Arthur gave him a new smile, a little lower on his neck. Blood ran over his hand. The boy made those little gurgling sounds that people did when their throats got cut. 

Horses whickered, somewhere close. Arthur let himself hope that the idiots hadn't killed his horse-she was fine enough to fetch a good price, too fine for the like of them. But he needed real weapons first. He leaned against the corner of the building, crouching, and blinked stars out of his eyes. Seemed like there were two men near some kind of shack. One of them making noise around the back, one of them leaning over the fire. 

The one by the fire went first. He dragged him back into the shadows of the shack and slit his throat as well, laying him down gentle. Then snuck around the corner and did the same thing to his friend, leaving him leaned up against the wall. 

Arthur almost laughed when he saw the familiar gun belt, draped over a couple of crates. Maybe would have cried, had he been the crying sort. The rifle was there, so were his pistols. Plenty of ammunition, too. When he straightened back up, feeling more comfortable with the weight of the weapons pressing on him, his vision wavered dangerously. He staggered toward the horses, one hand trailing along the side of the shack for balance.

The white mare was there, healthy as ever, and she started moving off before he was even finished hauling himself into the saddle. He guided her off the road, then gave her head and held on while she ran-every stride a fresh new hell, threatening to send him to the ground.

"Come on, girl, get me home." He mumbled into her mane, tangling his fingers into the long hair as he lost the strength to sit upright and just clung on. He needed to get back to camp, that was all. Just back to camp. Back from wherever here was. 

"Arthur, son, come on." He cracked his eyes open to an impossibly bright sun and licked his cracked lips. They tasted like blood. Could have even been his. The white expanse of the mare's neck and shoulder stretch out in front of his eyes for what seemed like miles-nothing beyond that horizon mattered. Dutch's voice swam after him, "Don't disappoint me. We need your help. Now, you keep yourself on that horse and come home."

"You ain't here, Dutch." He slurred with a thick tongue, staring unseeingly at the baked clay of the dry riverbed. 

"No, I'm not." Agreed Dutch, pleasantly. 

Arthur nodded to himself, pulled himself straighter in the saddle, "'S what I thought."   
He drifted, then, between feverish lassitude and, when he managed a few minutes of lucidity, sheer terror. The horse, uncaring where his feelings were concerned, kept up the same steady pace no matter how hard he squeezed her flanks with his legs. 

Then there was cool darkness, air that burned his lungs a little less. When he tipped his head back on a limp neck, he saw stars flickering through the tree branches. Smelled fresh mud and lake water. The horse stopped, suddenly, and he blinked in the firelight-stared with glassy eyes at the ragged camp. There was something he needed to do, wasn't there? Something he needed to tell Dutch. 

Arthur moved to swing his leg over the horse, but halfway through his body simply gave up and he hit the ground with a groan and a thump. Everything flickered dangerously. The grass, pressed up against his neck, was damp and pleasantly cool. He needed to tell Dutch. Shit, needed to tell Dutch that Colm was gunning for him. 

"Arthur." A face blocked out part of the sky, dark against dark. Then another. 

"Arthur?" It was the voice he wanted to hear, and relief cut through the stupor. A little bit of gravel, more than a little familiar. Dutch. 

"I told you it was a set-up, Dutch." His lips didn't work right, his jaw neither, but the words came out. 

"My boy, my dear boy, what?" And it was Dutch's voice-his real voice, not the one that'd been following Arthur around on the ride back.

The words spilled out, now, fuel by all those days of fear. "They got me, but I, I got away." 

"Yeah, you did." Dutch's hand carded through his hair, the first time a human's touch hadn't brought the threat of pain in a long time. "Miss Grimshaw, I need help! Reverend Swanson!" 

There was more. There'd been more that he needed to say, and the yelling was making his head pound. If everyone could just shut their mouths for a minute and let him get the words out. "He was gonna set the law on us." More people were pressing close, too many people. He couldn't keep track now. 

"Oh, of course he was." Dutch was grabbing him now, grabbing his arm and couldn't he see that it hurt. Arthur wanted to snap and pull away, shove at the hands, but he couldn't find the strength. 

"I'm sorry Arthur." Someone spoke behind his head, someone else pressing on his back. 

"It's a bit late for apologies. Swanson!" Dutch continued shouting and moving around. 

Everyone was moving around, not bothered by the way the world twisted around them. 

"Mister Morgan, mister Morgan, you're safe now." 

"Let's get him to bed." 

Too many hands hauled him to his feet, then arms pressed under his shoulders when everything titled and tried to throw him back on the ground. He staged, tried to walk in a straight line, and slumped against Dutch's shoulder. It hurt, damn it. Getting hauled around hurt. He just wanted to lie down on the ground and sleep. 

"You are safe now, Arthur." Dutch promised. "You're safe now." 

Safe. He was safe? That didn't seem right. The arms dropped him onto something soft. "That's pretty, Dutch. That's real pretty." None of them were god damn safe. Not with O'Driscoll and the Pinkerton's and everyone else out there trying to get them. Not with every shit plan that Micah put into Dutch's head.

Dutch didn't say anything about that, though, and Arthur couldn't keep his head on straight enough to get him to understand. He tried, a couple of times, to say something more, but the words all ran together and ended up sounding like groans. 

"You'll be okay, mister Morgan. You're home." He heard someone say and felt them take his hand gently. 

But it didn't seem like everything was going to be okay. It felt like a noose was tightening around his neck, pulling tighter and tighter until all he saw was black.


	2. Chapter 2

There wasn't a soul in camp who would call Arthur a gentle man, these days. He'd spent too long frowning and growling and acting all kinds of surly for them to think that. But Hosea knew differently. And now, with the boy laying life and half lifeless on that damned cot, it was easy to remember when he'd been younger. A happier time, maybe. Or at least one that time had worn down to only happy memories. 

Hosea could still see the boy, with sleep smoothing out the lines of Arthur's face and pulling away the mask that the other man had so carefully built. A lost boy. A gentle boy. A boy he'd called son, for long enough that the words rang true these days. Hosea still remembered when he'd found the boy, long ago and far away. 

It'd been a stormy evening, and he'd been riding through some town farther east looking for some easy cash to bring back to Dutch. A bribe, mostly, after spending a couple of months with Bessie trying to get away from the life. She wasn't coming with him, this time, but there'd been less resistance when he'd asked. Maybe the next time, they'd ride back together. 

Anyway, he'd been riding through this town, wandering around the saloons and keeping an ear out for anything interesting, when he'd heard about a stolen horse. 

"I'll give a five-hundred-dollar reward to anyone who can bring my horse back. Five hundred dollars! And another fifty if that kid is dead when you do." Some fat man, well dressed and dripping rainwater, was yelling from the front of the sheriff's office. 

Hosea had stopped-he wasn't really cut out for bounty hunting, but five hundred dollars was a hell of a lot of money for retrieving a horse and running off some scared kid. He leaned over the pommel of his own horse and waited to be noticed. 

"You there!" The man bellowed and started pointing. "You seem like you know your way around these parts. Look for my horse. I'll pay." 

Hosea feigned indifference and wondered how exactly this man made his judgements about people. What caused someone to look like they knew their way around 'these parts', as he'd put it? 

"I suppose I could keep my eyes open, since the money's good." He didn't want to overdo it, so he prevented himself from yawning. "Which way did this kid run off?" 

"West!" The man blurted, overly excited. "The boy, little piece of work, was running from the law. Probably stole something off someone. He grabbed me off my horse and stole it! And she's the best mare in my stable! A real thoroughbred, a racehorse." He was ringing his hands now, and Hosea made a note to remember his grief-stricken expression to practice later. Something about the way he screwed up his lips, it was just heartbreaking. 

"I'll keep my eyes open." Hosea repeated, waving and touching his heels to his horse's flanks. The boy, if he was smart, would be halfway across the state by now. Especially if he was on a horse as nice as the man described.

He was riding out of town when the icy rain turned into snow, filling in the muddy tracks on the road with white and blotting out the last of the day's sunlight with gray. He'd resigned himself to another wet, cold night in the middle of nowhere, and was attempting to remember happier, warmed activities with Bessie when a spot of red in the fresh snow caught his eye. 

Blood was nearly always interesting. Animal blood suggested an easy dinner. Human blood meant that there was probably some poor soul nearby who wouldn't resist being…relieved of their valuables. Hosea slid off his horse and examined the track. 

It was a human track, in the shape of a foot, leading into a trail of similarly bloody footprints. It appeared that someone with only one boot had rapidly dismounted, or maybe been thrown, and after wandering around for a while had started leading their horse down the road again. There was a slim chance that it was the horse thief, assuming he wasn't a particularly good horseman, but the tracks seemed a little fresh for that. 

Like any self-respecting outlaw, Hosea decided that the lure of money was worth an uncomfortable night in the frost and snow. He took his mare's reins and led her along, keeping one eye on the tracks and one on anything that could be leaping out of the shrubs-the boy had stolen one horse, he wasn't going to put it past him to steal another one. 

The bloody footprints continued for a while, the crimson patches growing larger as they went, until the ground got all chewed up again. Apparently, the thief had realized he was leaving a trail and had wrapped the foot with something. But Hosea was an old hand at following people who didn't want to be followed, and the skiff of snow was fresh enough that the boy's tracks were still clear. 

The moon was high behind the clouds when the trail turned off the road. Hosea followed it off to a small bluff and paused. There was a strange flicker of light from the base of the cliff, more than a lantern but not really enough for a proper fire. The boy was probably cold, and probably hungry, and probably expecting that he was being followed. Hosea hid his weapons under the saddle blanket and did up his coat over his gun belt. He'd play the tired traveler, and see how it went. 

"Hello?" He called, putting just the right nervous timber into his voice. He didn't let any of his real anxiety show though-it was always never-racking to go into an unknown situation, knowing that he'd been the slower draw. Dutch, well, he envied Dutch with his utter confidence. 

For a moment, the firelight flickered. Then a shadow flickered over the rock wall and the thief made his appearance. Hosea did his best not to smile. It was just a kid-maybe thirteen, scrawny and slouch-shouldered. Blond hair plastered against his head with melting snow. He held a rifle like he knew how to use it, though. 

"Hello." The boy responded, cautiously but without real aggression. 

"I see you've got a fire there." Hosea shuffled sideways, trying to get a look behind the rocks and see if the horse was hidden back in the overhang. 

The boy matched him, blocking the view. "Sure." 

"Mind if I join you?" The boy was too warry, right now. Maybe some food, some whiskey, and he'd relax a little. Put that gun down, fall asleep. The last thing Hosea wanted to do was shoot the kid. "I'll trade you some food for a place at your fire." 

The boy chewed the inside of his cheek and glanced over his shoulder. Hunger, it seemed, eventually won out. "I guess." 

"Thank you kindly, good sir." Hosea led his horse up the slope, and sure enough the stolen mare was tucked away near the fire. 

He'd been expecting the horse to be tethered and hitched, lathered up from the hard ride. But she seemed clean and dry, a rough wool blanket and a rag that might have once been a coat draped over her shoulders. Chewing on a stack of apples, happy as could be.

Rather than making a comment on the roan beauty, Hosea busied himself pulling provisions out of his saddlebags. He didn't have much, but he'd eaten lean before. And five-hundred-dollars was enough to buy plenty of food. 

The boy hunched over on a rock by the fire, rifle laid across his knees, and held out his hands to warm them. 

"You like bread? I've got some meat here, too. Cans of beans." Hosea started talking, like he would have to a skittish animal. "Plenty for both of us." 

The boy continued to watch, shivering silently, while he opened the cans and set them close to the edge of the fire. Then he helped himself to a few swallows of whiskey and offered up the bottle. 

"It'll warm you up." He suggested, when the boy gave the bottle a wooly eye and didn't take it. 

"I'm fine." 

Hosea sighed. "I can see you shivering from here." He shook the bottle. "I won't make you pay, if you're worried about that. My mother always said to be kind to strangers on the road, seeing as you never know what could happen." 

The boy took the bottle and sipped cautiously. He didn't make a face or cough, probably used to the stuff by this point. It didn't look like he'd had much of a childhood, judging by the darkness in his eyes and the fact that he didn't mind stealing people's horses out from under them. 

It wasn't until Hosea offered up the food-a loaf of bread and a couple pieces of smoked meat-that the boy started to relax. He set the gun down, at least, and stopped scowling. 

"So, where you from, kid?" It seemed an innocent enough question. 

The boy was cramming food into his mouth, seemed more like he was inhaling that chewing it. "Around, I suppose." 

Hosea nodded. "Me, too. It's not a bad sort of life, if you like that kind of thing." 

The boy swallowed and took the whiskey bottle again. "I was workin' on a ranch, for a while. But they don't need no help in the winter, so they let me go." 

"That's hard." Hosea spooned out some of his beans and decided that he'd give the boy the rest of his bread. Seemed like he needed it. He wondered how long the kid had gone without a proper meal. 

The boy shrugged. "I was goin' to find more work out west. Maybe the mines. They're always needin' someone." 

"The mines? Jesus, kid." 

"Arthur." The kid interrupted. "Name's Arthur." 

Hosea pondered his next move, taking his time pulling apart a piece of meat and chewing slowly. Arthur stared at him for a while, eyes narrowed with all the misplaced anger of youth, and then picked up the whiskey bottle and took another sip. 

He was just a kid, and down on his luck kid that seemed to either have useful skills or guts or both. Dutch had been talking about, how had he put it? Finding some like-minded individuals. But five hundred dollars was a hell of a lot of money for what would end up being an evening of work. Get the kid drunk, walk off with the horse. Collect the cash and live with the guilt. It wasn't like he hadn't done that before. 

Arthur was rolling the bottle between his hands and eyeing the rest of Hosea's bread in a way that was more predatory than thoughtful. Hosea passed it over the fire, then kicked up his feet and settled in for the long haul. It might do some good to get to know to boy, before he decided to rob him. 

"So, Arthur," Hosea tested the name out, watched the kid's eye flick up at the sound. "Any family?" 

Apparently that struck a sore spot, because the boy chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute before he answered. "Not," He cleared this throat and looked anywhere but in Hosea's direction. "Not anymore." 

"That's too bad, I lost my parents when-" 

Arthur shook his head. "Naw, it ain't that. My pa, he was a piece of work. And my ma, she died a couple of years back." There was anger in his voice, when he talked about his father. The deep, painful kind that suggested a depth built for years. 

"A piece of work, huh?" Maybe a good, old fashioned gripe would unstick to boy's jaws. 

The kid took another swig of whiskey, deeper this time, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Got strung up, last winter, for rustlin' cattle." 

"And you weren't part of that?" Hosea said it like a joke, "A fine young man like yourself." 

Arthur, honest to god, cracked a smile. "I was always a better rider than the old man." Then he seemed to realize that he'd said too much and went back to staring at his feet. "Not that…Not that I was there, or anythin'. 'Cause I weren't." 

"Of course not, dear boy." Hosea waved a hand. "We both know that stealing cows is near as bad as stealing horses." He looked pointedly at the roan mare, still happily swaddled under the blanket. 

The boy's head snapped up, eye warry again. "You're not going to bring me in, are you? I didn't mean to…I wasn't planning on…I thought about bringing her back, but the law was already there. And then she threw a shoe, and I…They'd have shot me, if they saw me. So I kept goin'." There was a desperation in his voice, in the way that the words spilled out, that pulled at something deep in Hosea's heart. 

He'd been a lost boy once, too. Years ago, now, but not so long that he couldn't remember. Always hungry and tired and alone. He couldn't turn the kid in, not even for all that money. 

"Finish your food." He said, "I'm not a bounty hunter. The thought of making money like that," He scoffed, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited. 

The boy picked at the bread, "There something wrong with bounty hunting? 'S better than workin' in the mines." His voice was quiet, scared, but his eyes were dark and hard and ready. There'd be a fight, if Hosea made the wrong move. 

"It's government work." Hosea snorted. He might be a showman, but he didn't have Dutch's way with words. If he'd been here, the boy would have probably already been convinced to rob a bank or a train or something. But Hosea did his best, trying to think of the words that Dutch would have used. "Work for those men that have thrown men like you and me in the mud and stepped all over us so they can have fancy horses and big houses and more mistresses than they can count." 

"So," Arthur started slowly. "You're some kind of outlaw, or somethin'?" 

"Something like that, yes." Hosea's heartbeat slowed a little, sensing that the immediate threat had passed. 

"You're not goin' to turn me in?" The kid asked again, finishing the bread. 

"No, I'd much rather give you a job." May as well put it bluntly, it seemed like the kid appreciated that. 

"A job?" He looked incredulous. 

Hosea laughed, "Well, I can't say that it's honest work. But it pays well. And it's better than the mines." 

Remembering that night, more than twenty years ago now, still brought a smile to Hosea's lips. He might have laughed too, because Arthur shifted on the cot and forced his eyes open. 

"Somethin' funny?" The boy practically choked out, his usual drawl turned even more raspy than was typical. 

Hosea passed him a cup of water and helped him sit up. "Nothing, dear boy. How are you feeling?" 

Arthur coughed on the water and made a face, "Damn, that hurts." He rubbed his ribs carefully. "I don' know, Hosea. I think the worst might be behind me, though." He smiled, lopsided under the bruises. Hosea nodded along, and listened to the birdsongs and the waves on the shore of the lake, and wondered if Arthur might be right. Maybe the worst was behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism? Suggestions? Chapter two will feature some Arthur and Hosea father/son bonding (there's never enough of that), and plenty of guest appearances from the rest of the gang.


End file.
